Log Cabin Village is a living history museum in Fort Worth, TX, devoted to the preservation of Texas heritage. Each of the 1800s structures, furnished with authentic artifacts, provides a vivid look at life in the nineteenth century frontier. The exhibits include a water-powered gristmill, a one-room schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, an herb garden, and several log home settings. Historical interpreters depict the lifestyle of Texans in the mid to late 1800s.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Cooking Then and Now...

Hungry?
No time to sit down and have dinner or lunch? Not a problem at all, because you
can drive to any fast food place and your hunger problems will be solved in a
matter of minutes. With so many fast food places now a days as an option to
have a quick meal we have lost appreciation for the work put into preparing our food.

Not so
long ago preparing a meal was not as easy as going to a super market and buying
the ingredients ready just to be cooked. According to Courtney Hybarger author
of When Dinner wasn’t Quick and Easy
“fruits and vegetables were grown on the farmstead and families processed
meats, such as poultry, beef and pork”. In the 1800s families did not have the option
of simply going to the store and buying what they needed. Everything had to be
grown at home for example “spices (nutmeg, cinnamon),seasonings (salt and pepper) had to be ground up with mortars and
pestles (Hybarger)”. These families actually had to make their foods out of
scratch and sometimes this process was an all day thing. They did not have the
convenience of being able to go to a store and buying food that just needed to
be popped in the microwave or cooked on the stove. In the 1800s there was a
huge difference in technology as well.

Refrigerators
an electronic appliance that we consider a necessity to keep our foods from
spoiling was non existent in the 1800s. In the 1800s to keep meats from
spoiling women used a process of curing. In this process meat was dipped in
“brine or salt and then exposed to sun and wind” (Bogan). Fruits and vegetables
on the other hand were placed out in the sun or near a heat source (Hybarger).
It is interesting to say that with very limited resources people managed to be
creative to surpass such obstacles as to how to preserve their foods. Another creative
tool was how they cooked their food.

We
might have microwaves and stoves but in the 1800s none of that existed. Without
stoves in the 1800s, women used what was a Dutch Oven (Hybarger). They placed
this oven in the hearths of brick fireplaces where they used different types of
fires and flames to cook their meals (Hybarger). For example in todays time you
might be used to running down to a Churches Chicken or KFC if you have a
craving for some chicken but in 1800s as Fannie Farmers states in her book The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book
cooking a Roast Chicken required a long process. For the chicken you first had
to dress, clean, stuff and truss it, then you had to season it and while it is
cooking you had to be checking and turning it so it will not burn (Farmers
251). This process might sound pretty easy and something that many do at a
Thanksgiving meal but imagine not having a stove with an oven and having to
cook it over a fire.

While
in the 1800s cooking was an all day chore because they had to make everything
from scratch and they had to make the perfect fire, today all of that has
dramatically changed. Now in the 21st century we can count on
refrigerators to preserve our foods and we have stoves and microwaves that are
life savers. Besides that we now even have a number of restaurants and fast
food places that provide us with a quick meal without all of the hard work that
was needed in the 1800s.